New book by former CIA analyst sheds light on JFK assassination - claims Oswald was working with Cubans

The mug shot of Lee Harvey Oswald the man charged with the assassination of John F KennedyGoogle Images

JFK’s alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had close ties to Cuba’s intelligence agency in the months before the assassination of the U.S. President in 1963, a new book by a former CIA analyst claims.

Brian Latell was the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America from 1990 to 1994 and has penned a book "Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, & the Assassination of John F. Kennedy," on the issue.

The new book maintains that the CIA lied about its knowledge of Oswald’s ties to the Warren Commission, which was established to investigate the assassination of JFK.

"I am now convinced that Oswald was engaged with the Cubans," Latell told Reuters.

The former CIA operative claims the new evidence confirms a previous conspiracy that Oswald was motivated to kill JFK in a bid to impress Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"I'm convinced he wanted to defect to Cuba," Latell said. "He loved Cuba and Castro, and wanted to join the revolution."

Latell’s latest publication is a revised edition of a book he published last year on Cuban intelligence.

It has been updated with unpublished memoirs of Thomas Mann, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time of the assassination, an interview with a Cuban intelligence agent, and declassified government documents.

Seven weeks before the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963, Oswald travelled to Mexico City by bus where he tried to obtain a visa from the Cuban embassy there to visit Havana.

"What he did during most of the time he spent in the Mexican capital remains perhaps the most important unsolved mystery of the Kennedy assassination," writes Latell.

During its investigation the Warren Commission was curious about the Mexico trip. But when the commission traveled to Cuba and asked about Oswald's hotel stay, the CIA hid its knowledge about goings on at the hotel, according to Latell.

Latell is the author of After Fidel, which has been published in eight languages.

Watch Dr. Brian Latell on "Cuba, Castro, and the CIA" at AFIO June 2012 Lunch

The mug shot of Lee Harvey Oswald the man charged with the assassination of John F KennedyGoogle Images